


When the Paint is Thin

by Udolphos



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Joker (2019)
Genre: Dark Character, Identity Issues, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, No Spoilers, Reflection, Short, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Udolphos/pseuds/Udolphos
Summary: One night few years after the events of the movie, the Joker looks in the mirror.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	When the Paint is Thin

The paint was thin tonight.

  
The Joker leaned closer to the mirror over the scattered cosmetics on the spacious pink marble countertop. Bottles of expensive fragrant lotions filled with things the Chemical Safety Board had averted their investigative eyes from to fill their wallets. Pink, and beige and subtly green, correcting. Things of ointments, snake oils, pig embryos, industrial toxins and snail creams to hide the ugly thing underneath.

  
The Bathroom, gilded and baby pink and fleshy beige. Sugary smelling. Littered with used cotton rounds and tissues and dustbunnies.

  
He in the looking glass jarringly real and peeling.

  
This was not his apartment. You can see that.

  
He touched his lips with the tips of his gunpowder stained fingers.

  
He liked the Joker’s face. It was a powerful face. Cruel. Gleeful. Vicious. Exuberant.

  
But the Joker’s face had to be washed away. It got dry. It started to shed. You could not apply a new layer of grease paint, one after another, after another, month after month. The skin under would rot.

  
When the paint came off the face that had belonged to somebody called Arthur Fleck was not there. What he saw in the mirror was just a empty frame of a face.

  
Of course the face was there. He could feel it with his fingers. He hadn’t forgotten what old Arthur looked like either.

No, he still visited.

  
The Joker scraped his cheek with the nail of his index finger. A ribbon of thick paint curled underneath the nail and fell in the sink.

  
The facelessness before a new face was applied was loathsome. How he did not just howl and howl he did not understand.

Each time it took more and more nerve to remove the paint. He would linger before a mirror like tonight.

  
And look at old Arthur peeking from gaps in the paint with that haunted look in his eyes.

  
In the nights like this when it had been raining. When the blue and red was running down the hollows of his cheeks.

  
When the paint got thin.

  
It was raining in Gotham tonight. Cats and Dogs.

  
And Arthur was there.


End file.
